Hello,

We hope that you are all making the most of the beautiful sunshine this weekend!

This week, we have been learning how to punctuate speech correctly through the use of inverted commas. After some interactive activities, the children had a go at using their speech punctuation bookmarks in order to punctuate the speech within the conversation they had produced on speech bubbles towards the end of last week. We were very impressed by the children’s use of green biros to self assess and edit the work they had produced, checking their work against the speech punctuation rules using the rhyme we had learned in class. Well done Year Three! As the week progressed, we then moved on to learning about the use of apostrophes for singular (e.g. the slave’s locket) and plural (the pirates’ swords) possession. Both classes then had the opportunity to practise this skill through colour coding and pictorial tasks, which then enabled the children to produce their own sentences (that indicated what each character owned) for their Roman slave diaries. Next week, we look forward to drafting, editing and publishing our topic work.

In Maths, we have started to learn about money and coin values. At the beginning of the week, the children were given a variety of tasks which they solved through an investigation. The children particularly enjoyed using the wide selection of coins on their tables in order to create combinations of different amounts of money. We then moved on to learn about conversion, opening up an ‘alien shop’ in which the children were required to exchange between pounds and pence before purchasing an item. Afterwards, we then began to explore the concept of exchanging multiple coins for a coin that is the sum of its value (e.g. exchanging two 5p coins for a 10p coin). Next week, we look forward to adding and subtracting pounds and pence, using a variety of strategies including number lines and formal written methods.

On Friday, the children had a fantastic time for Geography deep learning day. As part of our topic learning, we studied the development of the Roman Empire and in particular looked at the human and physical Geography of Italy. Year Three explored a range of carousel activities involving map skills before creating their own sets of top trump cards to compare the human and physical features of the United Kingdom and Italy.

We look forward to seeing you on Monday for our CAFOD ‘Wear it wacky’ non-uniform day. Please bring a donation of £1 and wear your brightest, most colourful clothes!

With best wishes,

Miss Honeywell, Mrs Stewart and Mrs Sumba

Hello,

We hope that you have all had a pleasant week so far.

This week, the children attended an assembly to find out which participants from the Spring Term Reading Passport Challenge had won a place on the ‘Rock Up’ school trip from the class raffle draws! We would like to congratulate all of the children who took part in the reading challenge and say well done to those who were lucky enough to have their names drawn from the hat during the assembly. We were delighted by the level of commitment shown by the children, and their families, during the completion of their passports.

In English, we have been learning how to create fronted adverbials for manner and degree, as well as how to add detail to a sentence through the addition of particular word classes – adjectives, prepositions, verbs and adverbs. As the week progressed, we looked more closely at the use of dialogue within a Roman slave diary, in order to capture a reader’s interest and make them feel as though they were on board a pirate ship too. The children worked in pairs to role play the conversations that may have taken place between the slaves and their captors, before recording their ideas on speech bubbles to reinforce the concept of turn-taking between characters within a conversation. Next week, we look forward to punctuating our speech using inverted commas to show when speaking starts and ends. We shall also be exploring the use of alternative verbs to ‘said’, to give the reader further clues about a character’s feelings.

In Maths, we completed our revision of the addition and subtraction on hundreds, tens and ones before introducing our new unit of learning: Money. The children have enjoyed exploring a range of different coins on their tables. In particular, we have been learning about the values of different coins as well as using a variety of mathematical representations to show this, e.g. using Numicon to show that a 10p coin can be made up of two 5ps, five 2ps, or ten 1ps. As the week continued, Year Three began to compare amounts of money (more than, less than and equal to) before studying a range of money problems. For example, we have used combinations of coins to reach a higher or lower value as well as to begin making amounts of money in different ways. Next week, we look forward to learning about how to convert between pounds and pence, before solving more complex problems involving money values.

Thank you to all the children who have been handing in their Romans and spelling home learning – we can’t wait to see all of the fantastic learning that children have been working on at home, during our home learning check on Friday 29th March 2019.

See you all next week!

Miss Honeywell, Mrs Stewart and Mrs Sumba

Hello,

We hope that you all had a good week last week and that you are enjoying the weekend so far.

On Friday this week, the Year 4 children of St. Peter’s Catholic School organised a whole school fundraiser day for guide dogs of the blind. Each child gave a 50p donation to the charity and wore a bright head piece or decoration on their heads. Well done to all of the Year 4 children who gave an excellent presentation about guide dogs for the blind during a whole school assembly, at the beginning of the day.

This week, Year Three have started their new topic on The Romans. Already, we have seen some excellent home learning projects which have clearly reflected the creativity and imagination of the children – for example, some children have created Roman shields and drawings and brought them into school for show and tell, to share their learning with their peers. We look forward to seeing more of these fabulous projects next week. In English, we have started to learn about Roman diaries and have been reading the text, Illiona of Mytillini: Diary of a Greek slave who was captured and sold in Rome. The children have been able to discuss the emotions of different characters and use picture clues and descriptions from the book to support their inferences about how each person would have felt. Next week, we look forward to continuing our learning on fronted adverbials and how sentences openers can add extra detail about where, when, or how much something happens within a sentence.

In Maths, we have been continuing to learn about measure in the context of weight (g and Kg). In particular, the children were given a series of scales problems whereby a set of traditional scales were balanced and the children had to use information about the weight of one item to calculate what the weights of two others sets of items must have been. As the week progressed, Year Three were also given open-ended problems to solve (how many combinations of objects can you weigh to reach a total weight of X grams, etc). We were impressed by the children’s use of collaboration when working together to reason and explain their opinions when problem solving throughout these challenges. Well done Year Three! Next week, we look forward to learning about the addition and subtraction of measurements, in more depth.

Just a quick reminder to let you all know that the Reading Passport challenge for Spring term is almost complete! All passports shall be collected on Wednesday 20th March 2019, ready for the class raffle draws on Friday 22nd March 2019. Good luck everyone!

We wish you all a relaxing and peaceful weekend,

Miss Honeywell, Mrs Stewart and Mrs Sumba.

Hello,

We hope that you have all been enjoying the weekend so far.

This week, the children took part in World Book day. All of the children dressed up as their favourite story book characters and we were amazed by the effort and care that had been taken by children and parents to make the costumes. Well done Year Three!

In English, we have been working collaboratively to create a Rainforest poem through shared writing. Using ‘explain, change, create’, each class was able to identify the poetic features from a poem before making adjustments to it and finally recreating their very own verses. The children had a strong selection of similes, alliteration, expanded noun phrases and verbs within their sentences, which helped to make their poems very entertaining to the reader! At the end of the week, both classes also attended the St. Peter’s poetry competition – we would like to congratulate the Y3 participants who each gave an excellent performance of their chosen poem.

In Maths, we have continued our learning on measure. In particular, we have focused upon the skill of reading scales and understanding how a scale is made of equal intervals. Through the context of grams (g) and kilograms (kg), Year Three have been able to read a set of scales and record the weights of different items. We were impressed by the commitment that had been demonstrated by the children, especially across a set of tricky reasoning problems whereby the children had to express their opinion and prove their answers were correct by using mathematical facts. Next week, we look forward to introducing the children to missing number problems in order to balance items that are weighed on a set of traditional scales.

We look forward to seeing you all next week,

Miss Honeywell, Mrs Stewart and Mrs Sumba

Hello,

We hope that you have all had a good week and that you are enjoying the weekend so far.

This week, St. Peters welcomed the children back to school for the beginning of the second spring term. In English, the children have been exploring Rainforest poetry. On Monday, the children were given a ‘mysterious bag of words’ from which to make predictions about the genre, purpose and audience of their next writing outcome: a night time Rainforest poem! As the week progressed, the children were given adjective and verb cards and took part in a ‘shades of meaning’ activity in order to develop their vocabulary banks and to discuss/compare the intensity of particular word choices. The children particularly enjoyed justifying their own choices when deciding how to order their language cards. At the end of the week, Year Three worked in table groups to order the sentences from a WAGOLL poem (What A Good One Looks Like) in order to make a cohesive poetic verse. We were impressed by the children’s annotations of poetic language including alliteration and similes, as well as their explanations for the effect these poetic devices have upon a reader or audience. Well done Year Three!

In Maths, we have been learning about measurements. At the start of the week, we introduced this unit by showing the children a riddle: “You are as wide as you are tall”. The children had a fantastic time taking part in a variety of investigative activities, to explore mm, cm and metres to prove or disprove this hypothesis. Furthermore, Year Three were then able to create their own tests such as ‘Your hand span is half the length between your elbow and fingers’, etc. In particular, the children have used bar models, their knowledge of fractions (e.g. half of a metre is 50cm, 1/10 of a cm is 1mm) as well as measuring equipment when solving a variety of measurement problems. As the week progressed, children were also given challenges including open-ended combination problems and the opportunity to measure with a ‘broken ruler’ to start counting out lengths from a number other than zero. We were delighted to see the children’s use of collaboration and commitment across these tasks.

We hope that you all enjoy the rest of your weekend and look forward to seeing you all at parents evening next week.

Kind regards,

Miss Honeywell, Mrs Stewart and Mrs Sumba